Hello to all.... one of my many sitars has it's frets tied with gut string :?Has anyone ever seen this used before ? I haven't ...but there is so much I haven't seen. Bharat told me that he has never heard of gut string being used ..... but this looks to be original to the instrument, with every fret tied the same and with the usual knots. Thanks

Actually, I asked all the makers that Sitars Etc. deals with and other knowledgable people, and none had any knowledge of gut string being used in the past. It is certainly not used now. Some even went further to state that it would not be "appropriate" , for whatever reasons which they did not elaborate.

Most said historically they did had never seen gut used. This came for the older makers.

High caste Nagar Brahmins have a real "thing" about dead animal parts. I think that goes to explain why any instrumentalist whose axe has such offending components like goatsin drumheads, goat skin Sarangi heads, etc, gets a bad rap and billing. Hey! Wait a minute. How about all those dearly loved Sarod players sporting those goatskin emblazoned instruments. Double standard there!!! Foul !!! I've even seen a real fight and threat to walk by a mridangam player if he had to sit on stage with the bass head exposed to the audience. Something to do with the dead animal head being exposed. Never mind the mridangam has a goatskin on both ends. I think he just wanted to show off his fettlesome, fleet of fingers, flights of fluid forte! If anybody is up on that tradition, I'd love to be educated on that subject. How about those bone or horn bridges? Tuning beads??? Saraswati Venas try their best to comply with this dead animal hangup. (Incidentally, I fully support animal rights groups just in case). That instrument gets into wax, brass, wood, plastic, crushed velvet. No animal at all. Heroic effort! Jeeez!, Am I ever on a ramble tonight! Getting back to the fret ties. My first sitar (Apr 19 1969) from Miraj had gut thread for the frets. A lovely garnet red color. Held up sorta well but no match for the good stuff, the #3 gold braid thread you can get now. (#5 just a tiny bit too thick, especially on slightly thinner frets). I overhauled quite a few sitars that had the gut thread. It really didn't last long enough. All such instruments had a late 50's - early 60's vintage. I run across one here in Hell once in a while but not on any new or recent stuff. Unless you've got a real collectable jewel with this gut stuff on the frets and want to keep it all original, I'd get that gut crap off, Round out the fret slots, (I just know it needs to be done) and put on some of that good stuff. Cheers!__________________http://www.karaseksound.com/

Originally Posted by "festus"Hello to all.... one of my many sitars has it's frets tied with gut string :?Has anyone ever seen this used before ? I haven't ...but there is so much I haven't seen. Bharat told me that he has never heard of gut string being used ..... but this looks to be original to the instrument, with every fret tied the same and with the usual knots. Thanks, Mike

This is probably the original means of tying the frets, since on the oldest members of the sitar's family the frets themselves consisted of no more than lengths of gut tied tightly all the way around the neck. Even after metal frets were first added, the binding was still tied all the way around the neck, running in a channel in the top of the fret.

Once the metal fret came into use and the gut was no longer required to act as anything besides binding, any suitable material could be substituted, and since, as sitarfixer has already noted, brahmanic hinduism looks upon any product of the slaughterhouse as unclean, there was a strong inclination use something besides gut.

What I did get, and forgot to mention, was that at one point, cotton thread covered with wax was used. They said this resembled gut strings. Most of the answer we got were from Kolkata. It cold be that makers in other parts of India did use gut. But cotton being plentiful and gut being expensive in comparison, I can see why one would favor cotton over gut.

Originally Posted by "Sitarfixer"High caste Nagar Brahmins have a real "thing" about dead animal parts. I think that goes to explain why any instrumentalist whose axe has such offending components like goatsin drumheads, goat skin Sarangi heads, etc, gets a bad rap and billing. Hey! Wait a minute. How about all those dearly loved Sarod players sporting those goatskin emblazoned instruments. Double standard there!!! Foul !!!

But remember that the sarod, just as the sitar, began its career in India as a foreign and unclean instrument, associated with Muslims, and Iranian and Turkic music.

The sarod is really no more than a Central Asian rabab modifed in the direction of the vina, just as the sitar is a modified Central Asian tanbur. But while it makes little difference what material is used to bind the sitar's frets, there really wasn't, until fairly recent times, any suitable substitute for leather to make the sarod's membrane.

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Originally Posted by "Sitarfixer"I've even seen a real fight and threat to walk by a mridangam player if he had to sit on stage with the bass head exposed to the audience. Something to do with the dead animal head being exposed. Never mind the mridangam has a goatskin on both ends. I think he just wanted to show off his fettlesome, fleet of fingers, flights of fluid forte! If anybody is up on that tradition, I'd love to be educated on that subject.

Well it's just as you say. Leather is regarded by orthodox upper-caste Hindus as unclean, and in the old days drummers came almost entirely from leatherworking lower castes. In fact the English word "pariah" comes from the name of a caste traditionally occupied as drummers.

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Originally Posted by "Sitarfixer"How about those bone or horn bridges?

Horn is shed, and thus not the result of slaughter, and is what was normally used on the Hindu vina. The sitar has been working its way only gradually to the same status as that of the true vina, and orthodox Hindus have likewise only gradually come to embrace it. The elimination of bone and gut components has been part of that process.

Of course many, if not most, modern Hindus observe no such taboos.

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Originally Posted by "Sitarfixer"Tuning beads??? Saraswati Venas try their best to comply with this dead animal hangup. (Incidentally, I fully support animal rights groups just in case). That instrument gets into wax, brass, wood, plastic, crushed velvet. No animal at all. Heroic effort! Jeeez!,

Yes, although even the Sarasvati vina itself is in part modelled after the Carnatic rabab! :wink:

I don't want to get into a long winded argument here as to the origin of various instruments. DRW has a very set and popular theory of the origin of some Indian instruments. Some reading this should also be aware that there are others who also strongly state and are equally convinced that many modern Indian instruments developed from older Indian isntruments with influence from the invading cultures and not as some would have it adopted from instruments of the invading cultures.

Originally Posted by "sitarfanatic"I don't want to get into a long winded argument here as to the origin of various instruments.

Not to worry, for it shall never become necessary for you to get into a long winded argument; you may always just yield to me. :wink:

Quote:

Originally Posted by "sitarfanatic" DRW has a very set and popular theory of the origin of some Indian instruments. Some reading this should also be aware that there are others who also strongly state and are equally convinced that many modern Indian instruments developed from older Indian isntruments with influence from the invading cultures and not as some would have it adopted from instruments of the invading cultures.

The opinion of these others, how strongly they state it, and how well convinced they are of it, however, is really of no significance. The only thing that matters is the arguments offered for any claim, their logic, and the evidence upon which they are based.

It is widely acknowledged even among Indian musicians themselves that the sarod developed out of the rabab, and even rather recently, and there exists no literary reference nor depiction of either rabab, sitar, or tambura anywhere in India until after the entry of Central Asian Muslims. The same instruments are, however, depicted and described in Central Asia and Iran well before this time. The manner of construction of these instruments is one alien to the native vinas, but common practice all over Central Asia, Iran, and Eastern Europe, down to details of the neck-joint construction, arrangement of tuning pegs, forms of decoration, etc. Further, just as this discussion has brought to light, the older a sitar we have, the more its various features tend to deviate from its modern vina-like version, and the closer they come to those of their Central Asian ancestors. Likewise, the further back we go, the more exclusively we find the sitar and sarod in the hands of Muslim musicians and eschewed by Hindus, the sitar found originally in no other context besides the Mughal courts. Moreover, the history of the long-necked lute can be fairly well traced, in literary references and depictions, from its origins in the Sumerian pan tur to the various versions used in Iran, including the dotar "two string", setar "three string", chartar "four string", panchtar "five string", shashtar "six string", etc. During all of the same period in India, however, there is no depiction nor written description of any such instruments, the name 'vina' applying at first entirely to boat harps, and then later to tube zithers.

What is a reasonable person to make of such a body of evidence but that the instruments in question originated outside of India and Hindu culture?

Also, in regard to what readers should know: they should also know that there is in India a strong tendency in some circles to try to deny any foreign influences on its culture, especially Muslim ones, with some even trying to claim India as the source of all human culture and Sanskrit the mother of all human languages, contrary to what science tells us on the matter. Raja Sourindro Mohun Tagore, for one, went about inventing several new Sanskrit names for a number of Indian musical instruments which did not originally bear them, but didn't always bother to indicate in his writings that a name was his own invention, thus causing some confusion for a time with Western musicologists who followed his lead.

Not until the history of Indian musical instruments was looked at in the wider context of world history did we get the clearer picture that we have of it today, as, of course, India itself is but a part of the larger world.

Hi David,Interesting discussion David. The only problem I have is that your argument is more of an argumentum ab silentio. Lack of depiction is not proof that they did not exist.

My first teacher was a rabab player. The first time I saw a sarode, the similarities between the two instruments are such that it would be difficult not to imagine some sort of common origin or lineage.

What about literary description of instruments as opposed to depiction?

Pb

quote="David Russell Watson"]

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Originally Posted by "sitarfanatic"I don't want to get into a long winded argument here as to the origin of various instruments.

Not to worry, for it shall never become necessary for you to get into a long winded argument; you may always just yield to me. :wink:

Quote:

Originally Posted by "sitarfanatic" DRW has a very set and popular theory of the origin of some Indian instruments. Some reading this should also be aware that there are others who also strongly state and are equally convinced that many modern Indian instruments developed from older Indian isntruments with influence from the invading cultures and not as some would have it adopted from instruments of the invading cultures.

The opinion of these others, how strongly they state it, and how well convinced they are of it, however, is really of no significance. The only thing that matters is the arguments offered for any claim, their logic, and the evidence upon which they are based.

It is widely acknowledged even among Indian musicians themselves that the sarod developed out of the rabab, and even rather recently, and there exists no literary reference nor depiction of either rabab, sitar, or tambura anywhere in India until after the entry of Central Asian Muslims. The same instruments are, however, depicted and described in Central Asia and Iran well before this time. The manner of construction of these instruments is one alien to the native vinas, but common practice all over Central Asia, Iran, and Eastern Europe, down to details of the neck-joint construction, arrangement of tuning pegs, forms of decoration, etc. Further, just as this discussion has brought to light, the older a sitar we have, the more its various features tend to deviate from its modern vina-like version, and the closer they come to those of their Central Asian ancestors. Likewise, the further back we go, the more exclusively we find the sitar and sarod in the hands of Muslim musicians and eschewed by Hindus, the sitar found originally in no other context besides the Mughal courts. Moreover, the history of the long-necked lute can be fairly well traced, in literary references and depictions, from its origins in the Sumerian pan tur to the various versions used in Iran, including the dotar "two string", setar "three string", chartar "four string", panchtar "five string", shashtar "six string", etc. During all of the same period in India, however, there is no depiction nor written description of any such instruments, the name 'vina' applying at first entirely to boat harps, and then later to tube zithers.

What is a reasonable person to make of such a body of evidence but that the instruments in question originated outside of India and Hindu culture?

Also, in regard to what readers should know: they should also know that there is in India a strong tendency in some circles to try to deny any foreign influences on its culture, especially Muslim ones, with some even trying to claim India as the source of all human culture and Sanskrit the mother of all human languages, contrary to what science tells us on the matter. Rabindranath Tagore, for one, went about inventing several new Sanskrit names for a number of Indian musical instruments which did not originally bear them, but didn't always bother to indicate in his writings that a name was his own invention, thus causing some confusion for a time with Western musicologists who followed his lead.

Not until the history of Indian musical instruments was looked at in the wider context of world history did we get the clearer picture that we have of it today, as, of course, India itself is but a part of the larger world.

Originally Posted by "element-82"Hi David,Interesting discussion David. The only problem I have is that your argument is more of an argumentum ab silentio. Lack of depiction is not proof that they did not exist.

The lack of depiction is one aspect only of my argument, and so that aspect only is ab silentio but none other, but the question is whether these instruments are of indigenous or foreign origin, and the fact that they are first depicted and described in Central Asia and Iran, and don't appear in Indian literary or artistic depictions until after Central Asians begin to enter India in large numbers does indeed increase the likeliness of their origin in those areas.

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Originally Posted by "element-82"My first teacher was a rabab player. The first time I saw a sarode, the similarities between the two instruments are such that it would be difficult not to imagine some sort of common origin or lineage.

But of course. Now compare the Afghan tanbur and Persian setar to the Indian sitar and see if the same does not apply.

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Originally Posted by "element-82"What about literary description of instruments as opposed to depiction?

There's neither depiction nor literary description of these instruments in Indian, either one, until after the entry of Central Asians during India's Islamic period.

Of course, though, in the form which they have finally assumed in India today, they must be regarded as the descendants of the indigenous vina as well.

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